


Unweaving the Rainbow

by pandemonium_213



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-19
Updated: 2011-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandemonium_213/pseuds/pandemonium_213
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The servant of Nienna takes issue with the servant of Aulë's study of light.</p><p>MEFA 2009: Second Place - Genres: Ficlets: General</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unweaving the Rainbow

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my LJ-droogs at the Bad Clam for feedback and in particular, Moreth for the comment (see the servant of Aulë's response) that inspired me to write this.

The fractured song of the sun’s light, parsed by hundreds of crystals, lashed the stark walls of the workshop. The servant of Nienna, still unaccustomed to the corporeal, squinted at the cacophony of hues thrown forth by suspended geometries.

Sensing his presence, the servant of Aulë turned to his peer. He smiled and beckoned.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Aulë’s man, gesturing to the fragmented light.

“Yes, the colors are lovely, but there is much to be said for the pure light of the sun.”

“That is so, but I wish to understand the light’s order from its spectrum.”

Harmonics from a remote plane entered the discomfited thought of Nienna’s servant, and he recited the words:

 _There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:_  
We know her woof, her texture; she is given  
In the dull catalogue of common things.  
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,  
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,  
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—  
Unweave a rainbow...

The servant of Aulë immediately countered:  
__  
Did ever poet image aught so fair,  
Dreaming in whisp'ring groves by the hoarse brook?  
Or prophet, to whose rapture heaven descends?  
Ev'n now the setting sun and shifting clouds,  
Seen, Greenwich, from thy lovely heights, declare  
How just, how beauteous the refractive law.  
  
“Your curiosity will be your downfall,” said Nienna’s servant. “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."

"And he who does not seek to discover the order of a thing will never comprehend it."

Aulë’s servant turned away, resuming his measurements of the white light that unraveled into vibrant tones of soprano violet to basso red. Nienna’s devotee reconsidered the uncompromising beauty of the refractive law, his foresight informing him this was only the beginning of the debate.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is ripped right off of Richard Dawkins' book, [Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder](http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734) and the quoted verses are from John Keats' [Lamia](http://www.bartleby.com/126/37.html) (~ verse 230 and on) and [A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-poem-sacred-to-the-memory-of-sir-isaac-newton/) by James Thomson.
> 
> Readers will no doubt recognize the line "He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom" from _The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of Ring_ by J.R.R. Tolkien.


End file.
